How Apple stole notifications from Android and beat them with iOS 5

If you haven’t seen the pattern before, well, you just haven’t been looking — Apple might not be the first with a feature all of the time, but the company almost always has the last laugh. Remember what happened with copy and paste? It’s almost unimaginable to think that the iPhone didn’t have this feature until almost three years into its existence, but when Apple introduced it, it worked like nothing before it — and by that, I mean it worked, and worked effortlessly. Notifications were arguably the biggest pain point for most iOS users, and Apple, as you know, has addressed them in a big way with Notification Center. How do you access Notification Center? You simply swipe down from the top of the device and a drawer-like panel slides down and displays your notifications. It sounds familiar, yes, but it’s really so much more than what we’ve seen in Android so far. Hit the jump to read on.

How does this differ from Android? Well, for starters, Android populates your status bar at the top of the device with the icon of the app from which you received a notification, and when you run out of screen space, it hides the rest. To see your actual notifications, you pull down the notification pane, and they are listed in there in order from newest to oldest. And you have zero control over those notifications. All you can do is clear them all, or tap them one by one, which brings you into the app that notified you, until they are all clear. You can’t prioritize, choose the sort order, determine what apps you want to actually be in that drawer — nothing.

Beyond Apple’s superior Notification Center UI and the great widget support, initially for weather forecasts and a real-time stock ticker, the company that usually doesn’t give users such fine grain control completely delivers this time. Notification Center lets you chose not only the order in which your notifications are sorted, but also how many notifications from each app you’d like to display (either 1, 5, or 10), and whether or not they appear on the lock screen.

This alone is invaluable — while I get a tiny icon in the status bar in Android letting me know I have a new email, with iOS I can now see a preview of that message along with others. Additionally, I can swipe a particular notification and be directly taken to that individual message or alert right from the lock screen. You can also clear just a specific notification in Notification Center as well, which actually makes my workflow much easier since I rely on calendar events to run my life, and I can leave that calendar notification in the drawer even past the meeting time to remind me of something I need to follow up on.

When you get a notification and are in an app, the top part of the screen will flip down like a number on an old analog alarm clock, displaying your notification. After a few seconds, it will flip back up to reveal the rest of the screen. This also is another place where Android hasn’t innovated, as getting a notification on an Android phone simply displays the icon in the top status bar, but doesn’t give you a preview of that message for all apps, just certain ones. Apple certainly took the drawer concept from Android, but as it has done with countless other features, the company implemented it better than anyone else. Apple didn’t borrow it from Android… Apple stole it, which is why the implementation is as good as it is. If Apple borrowed it, we’d all just have a drawer stuffed full of dirty socks. And notifications.

And the Apple fanaticism continues…pathetic. They are not innovators, they take other peoples ideas and alter them and their cult screams praises…

Rjones1933

Man, you Apple fanboys are all in Apple’s ass anything Apple doe’s it’s superior. Android has had notification sens the beginning. I never heard anyone speak of Android notification as being superior, when Apple didn’t have it. all of the Apple fanboys are full of shit.

Junks

Not biased at all, apple sucks, your article sucks.

rofl

I came here expecting some NEWS and find that BGR has posted another article about iOS5?

This is beyond sad. I’m wondering what he’s going to do when iPhone 5 (or whatever) comes out.

Day 1: I saw iPhone 5 at conference. Excited.
Day 2: I still can’t get iPhone 5 out of mind. Excited.
Day 3: Still excited! *looks at right hand and the picture of iPhone 5*
Day 4: *Not available*
Day 5: *Not available*
Day 6: *smoking a cigarette* Damn, iPhone 5. That was amazing. *washes hand*

I like Apple (products) as much as the next guy, but continuous posts about iOS5? It’s beyond repetitive. I always wondered if what ppl saying about BGR being a complete iPhone fanboy was true or not.. obviously it is.

google releases 2 updates per year, they aren’t always up an increment, 1.5 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.0 there’s six for you, android has had more iterations than iOS

http://twitter.com/DaBadGuy LL Cool Heem

Lol, this is funny my Evo does this already with cyanogen mod and last time I checked you can go into any app and set how often you are notified and how via display, light, or vibrate. etc etc etc etc etc……………….

Iittaalliiaann77

Exactly! I obviously don’t have an iPhone 4 but used to own a 3GS. Between the lack of innovation and the shit service on AT&T I tossed it and got my favorite phone to date. The DX on Verizon. I also have a EVO for work. Both phones are leaps and bounds over the iphone. What is this other thing Apple copied off of Blackberry? The blinking light for notification…yea, Android did too but last time I checked, iPhones dont have LED lights on the front of their phones. Please don’t tell me its the camera LED on the back that blinks for notifications…What the hell good does that do if your phone is sitting on top of the desk..LOL that is too funny. I’m a marketing grad and anyone in my field knows that in order to generate revenue, you have to meet the demands of your target audience and the new innovations in the industry you are marketing in, in order to catch the consumers eye. The smartphone industry is ever changing at a rapid pace. Its amazing what these little devices can do compared to just 4 yrs ago. At least Google takes the initiative and is building on their innovations and making them better and investing in NFC payment and 4G phones and voice calls over 3G etc. What does Apple do? Wait yrs after the technology has lifted off and slowly roll out something that has been the norm for yrs. Why? Cause they make things “That just work.” Come on…that bullshit will only last them for so long before people catch on to their brain washing crap. It kills me that one of their top 10 new areas of iOS 5 is a to-do list. Are you kidding me? Thats what you come up with? Then you watch their video and they act like their to-do list is so innovative that they make it seem like they just invented the flying car. They add video calling last yr but limit you to wifi only. What a joke. Why bother? I can say this, Verizon has LTE just about everywhere now, Sprint has Wimax everywhere and AT&T is jumping on board late summer…if Apple does not make their 4GS/5 phone 4G at the very least, they are shooting themselves in the foot. Who the hell wants to commit to a 2yr contract with a 3G phone with no real innovation while others are surfing around on 4G already and will have been for years by the time your contract is up again and you can finally update to the iPhone 7 4G, lol.

David Gifford Jr.

So Apple released a copy of something Android did, but improved on the idea…who would have guessed that! Now we wait and see what Google does to counter.

Anonymous

Apples good at taking others innovation copying and pasting it with a twist,they may even some day have ascreen biggerthan 3.5….oops I gave away their upcoming new phone now others will copy…dang it

Master O’Disaster

I ignore most of JG’s fanBoi Goofball Reports these days. ZE’s reporting is more useful.

If I wanted to go to a website that extolls all things Apple and rips apart anything anything without a fruit logo, there are a billion websites out there for that. I used to come to BGR years ago for it’s fairly neutral reporting and early breaking news & trends.

This website offers little of both anymore. Within a week or two, I will decide if BGR earns a very rare honor in my Firefox (not Safari) web browser: I am strongly considering removing a live bookmark.

Iittaalliiaann77

I agree. It’s one thing to like one product over another, but to come out with this article and flat out be ignorant is over the top. I know he has reviewed Android phones. He knows what those phones are capable of. How can you hang on Apple’s nuts with the statements made above and be completely wrong on how Android does not do the same things when it comes to the notifications. Every part of the iOS notification revamp can and has been done on Android for years and NO you do not have to root your phone in order to get it done. When Apple reinvents the wheel with something and gives it that “WOW” factor then I will give him credit for writing an article like this. Until then: There were touch screens before the iPhone and there were apps too. There were cameras and video recording and video chat before them too. The iPad is a big iPhone. Same OS, same boring icon filled home screen w/ no real use of the real estate….”But there are so many cool apps for the iPad,” SO WHAT. Give the Devs a chance. Look at the amount of Android apps now, compared to when the OS was new. Give it time and you will have your fancy x-ray apps for the Xoom and other Android tablets too. Give us something we have never seen before, Apple. Then you can label yourself “innovative.” They are just plain arrogant. If my DX dies then I go to my local Verizon store and switch it out. What happens if the iPhone dies…I have to track down an Apple store because they want complete control. Lets see how many people pay for your notification tones that you just added to the OS. I had custom tones on my LG flip phone from 2002. People will figure out how to add them for free like they did w/ the regular ringtones. They are only in it for the money. Like that multi-billion dollar company doesn’t have enough of it.

Anonymous

I agree, good comment

shr1k3r

they both just steal from palm…

Joe

cyanogenmod allows you to get rid of notifications one by one… try something other than stock before you bow down to steve jobs..

IPwn

Why? He is comparing stock iPhone to stock Android. If you wanna compare root to jailbreak then apple wins, again

http://twitter.com/kaydpea chris moore

lol no, sorry the jailbreak community is dwarfed by the rooting/rom development community on android, sorry they’re simply incomparable, you can install entirely different OS’s on android devices, try again

mayelyshusby gummybear

So lets all just sit and wait for another lawsuit to happen lol.. and dude my android phone does this allready.. i didnt have to wait 5 years for apple to release it.. it came out since day 1… so HA!!!!!

IPwn

Android also lacked a virtual onscreen keyboard and auto rotation from day 1. Hmmm?

Ray Darbinyan

bullshit…Android already has that. Who wrote this JOKE of an article?
Go do your homework before you post articles newbie.

Plus – No one wants to get pop ups on their screen, whether in the center or the top, while they’re working on something. Status bar does it right without interfering with your work.

Anonymous

Id rather have a pop up than a crowded status bar. That is one of my pet peeves on Android.

http://twitter.com/brooksbalogh Brooks Balogh

Sounds like LockInfo to me

Ambient711

Wow what do you know, it looks like Apple has moved on from stealing things from Jailbreak developer’s creations to now taking pieces of Android’s OS.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_BN3LUVEV7BTS2NZOHAN3LV6DZE Chelsea Sampson

I paid $32.67 for a XBOX 360 and my mom got a 17 inch Toshiba laptop for $94.83 being delivered to our house tomorrow by FedEX. I will never again pay expensive retail prices at stores. I even sold a 46 inch HDTV to my boss for $650 and it only cost me $52.78 to get. Here is the website we using to get all this stuff, BidsGet. com

Anonymous

Praising apple for being late to the game is pathetic fanboyism.

http://DiscipleshipGuy.com/ Matthew E. Parrott

Actually you can swipe away single notifications in the curtain in Android. Some times it can be tedious, but once you are familiar with it it’s a piece of cake.

jezza

this article = FAIL

Ethan021

umad?

http://www.facebook.com/franzvezuli Franz Vezuli

BGR = Apple fanboy reports

http://twitter.com/kaydpea chris moore

sorry but android’s open apis allow for notification prioritizing, it may not be built in, but it can be changed… assuming apple has trumped anyone is wildly ridiculous, call me when you can customize the sms ringtone on your iphone

http://www.cellpig.com/ Cellpig.com Co-Owner Bryan

I am counting the days till iOS 5 is released. I still may choose an Android for my next phone but I’ll wait and see.

JJose

I guess this will just get added to Android in one of the coming releases which btb are frequent compared to Apple’s releases. After all what is to prevent Android from copying a superior aspect from a feature which Apple copied from Android

Anonymous

I personally cant see how this is useful at all… it’s very rare that I would have more than two or three notifications before having the time to see what they are… so this strikes me as encoding time badly spent. Perhaps they should have looked at some decent widget SDKs for developers to make… now that would have been iOS catching up to android (in part).

Eric

This article should be pulled. Poorly researched and uses many false facts as the sole evidence for most points.

Try again. Maybe this time you can do more than play blogger.

Anonymous

I think your damaging the reputation of this site (your site) with this continuous love-fest for all things iOS while bashing Android. I remember your review of the Nexus One where you followed with an opinion piece that in its tone almost seemed as if you had suffered some personal wrong from the phone or by Android itself. It was very strange. Its your site so you will do what you want, but these sorts posts make me less inclined to visit.